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2925 Redefining AmericaWhy Poverty Persists in America Matthew Desmond Matthew Desmond (b. 1979%u20131980) is a sociology professor at Princeton University and the author of Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City (2016), which won a Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction, and Poverty, by America (2023). In 2015, he was a recipient of the MacArthur Foundation %u201cGenius%u201d grant. KEY CONTEXT This excerpt comes from an article published in the New York Times in March 2023. This article is adapted from Poverty, by America . According to the U.S. Census Bureau%u2019s website, in 2023 %u201c[t]he official poverty rate in 2022 was 11.5 percent, with 37.9 million people in poverty.%u201d KEY CONTEXT This excerpt comes from an article published in the In the past 50 years, scientists have mapped the entire human genome and eradicated smallpox. Here in the United States, infantmortality rates and deaths from heart disease have fallen by roughly 70 percent, and the average American has gained almost a decade of life. Climate change was recognized as an existential threat. The internet was invented. On the problem of poverty, though, there has been no real improvement %u2014 just a long stasis. As estimated by the federal government%u2019s poverty line, 12.6 percent of the U.S. population was poor in 1970; two decades later, it was 13.5 percent; in 2010, it was 15.1 percent; and in 2019, it was 10.5 percent. To graph the share of Americans living in poverty over the past half-century amounts to drawing a line that resembles gently rolling hills. The line curves slightly up, then slightly down, then back up again over the years, staying steady through Democratic and Republican administrations, rising in recessions and falling in boom years. What accounts for this lack of progress? . . . The primary reason for our stalled progress on poverty reduction has to do with the fact that we have not confronted the unrelenting exploitation of the poor in the labor, housing and financial markets. %u2022 %u2022 %u2022 As a theory of poverty, %u201cexploitation%u201d elicits a muddled response, causing us to think of course and but, no in the same instant. The word carries a moral charge, but social scientists have a fairly coolheaded way to measure exploitation: When we are underpaid relative to the value of what we produce, we experience labor exploitation; when we are overcharged relative to the value of something we purchase, we experience consumer exploitation. . . . Consider how many employers now get one over on American workers. The United States offers some of the lowest wages in the industrialized world. A larger share of workers in the United States make %u201clow pay%u201d %u2014 earning less than two-thirds of median wages %u2014 than in any other country belonging to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. According to the group, nearly 23 percent of American workers labor in lowpaying jobs, compared with roughly 17 percent in Britain, 11 percent in Japan and 5 percent in Italy. Poverty wages have swollen the ranks 5Summarize the ways in which employers %u201cget one over on American workers%u201d (par. 5). Why does Desmond pick Belgium and Canada to serve as points of comparison?1M. Scott Brauer/Redux1Copyright %u00a9 Bedford, Freeman & Worth Publishers. Distributed by Bedford, Freeman & Worth Publishers. For review purposes only. Not for redistribution.